


in a simpler world

by possumdnp



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Introspection, M/M, Queer Themes, The Sims
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-10 01:28:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20519714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/possumdnp/pseuds/possumdnp
Summary: It was never really an option to make Dil gay.(or, “how the Sims series [and Dab and Evan’s relationship] hits differently”)





	in a simpler world

“So people are shipping Dab and Evan,” Dan says.

“Wha’?” Phil says thickly, half a biscuit stuffed in his mouth.

“Yeah. Look.” Dan turns his laptop to scroll through some of the comments of their latest Sims video.

“But they’re _toddlers.”_

“You think people care?” Dan rolls his eyes.

“I think it could be a sweet thing in the future, maybe.” Phil’s words are gentle, like he’s trying to tread a bit carefully with this subject. “But I reckon we can see how it goes. We can make them just friends if we want. We have time.”

\---

It was never really an option to make Dil gay.

In the beginning, they had joked about making him flirt with everyone he saw, but that had never been a route they’d truly wanted to go down, for so many reasons.

“I mean, if Dil is really the combination of us, he’d be going after that Preston guy instead of Summer Holiday,” Phil says when they’re editing one of the first videos. “Preston is hot. I mean. For a Sim.”

Dan had given him a judgmental look, the one that he gives Phil about a dozen times a day.

And then Dil meets Tabitha, and Dan and Phil start to consider Dil more of a son than their spliced-together combination anyway. And then it doesn’t really matter what he is, because Dil quickly becomes his own weird individual person who is actually pretty different from the two of them (and not just because he’s straight).

\---

They’d planned Dab from the beginning. Well, not _him_ specifically. Not the curly-haired kid with a meme for a name. But they’d wanted Dil to have a child because it would make the game more interesting, and it’d be a way to add characters to the series when Dil’s solo adventures got a bit stale. But they didn’t plan out what the kid’s future would be, because they wanted some spontaneous fun in the storytelling (like Evan Pancakes’ entire existence, born from the literal fires of Dan’s terrible-wonderful ideas).

Dab’s a cute toddler, and then a cute kid, and so is Evan. It’s enough for a while. But time doesn’t stand still, and eventually, things have to change.

It comes up when they’re sat down together to plan out Gamingmas. Phil has his laptop out and his glasses on. He’s also wearing his super-serious work shirt, the one that’s white and doesn’t have any dogs or dinosaurs on it. He tells Dan it helps him think.

(It doesn’t help _Dan_ think, for the record. The material hugs Phil’s chest very nicely and makes Dan not want to be talking about work anymore.)

“I think all of the kids should be aged up.” Phil looks excited as he talks about it. “It’d be the perfect end to Gamingmas. A super heartwarming Christmas story, y’know? The gift of age.”

Dan laughs. “You weirdo. Okay. That’s fine. Sim toddlers are kind of a pain anyway.”

“Which means aging Evan up too.”

“Of course.”

“Which means teenage storylines.”

Dan sighs. He knows what he’s getting at. “Phil. Just say it.”

“I think we should make Dab and Evan a thing next year. A romantic thing.”

They’ve avoided talking about this because it made Dan anxious back when the shipping first started, and they’ve never really opened it back up for discussion. The shipping comments under the Sims videos just turned into background noise that he knew he’d have to deal with at some point, but that he compartmentalized. Much like his own sexuality, actually. (Huh. Maybe that’s something else to bring up with his therapist.)

“I think our subscribers would actually kill us if we didn’t,” Dan says.

Phil closes his laptop. “Dan. Are you going to be okay with it? I mean, it’s a big step.”

Dan stares down at the table. “Remember how fucking nervous I was when we posted the first Dream Daddy?”

“Yeah.”

“This makes me even more nervous than that.”

Phil nods. “Okay. Do you know why?”

“What, are you my therapist now?” Dan says with a laugh. Phil just grins, but says nothing, waiting patiently for Dan to continue. “It’s just, I feel like with Dream Daddy, I reasoned that all the straight guys like Mark were playing it for the lols, so we could too, and we could argue that it didn’t matter.”

“Plausible deniability?”

“Mmmhmm. But with this… Dil is ours. _Dab_ is ours. They’re us, in a way.”

“And we have to stick with it,” Phil says. They’d already decided not to continue with Dream Daddy on their channel. Not because it was gay, but because it was far too much reading for them to be able to banter properly. But the Sims is different. It’s their longest-running series, something that means a lot to them.

“Yeah. I guess just having something so blatantly queer as a main staple of our channel scares me.” He sighs, then meets Phil’s eyes. “But. I _really_ want to do it.” He fiddles with a pen that’s been cast aside on the table. He clicks it several times. “You want to know something? Sometimes I used to imagine going this route with Dil. Making him gay.”

Phil laughs, surprised. “You did?”

“Of _course_ I wanted our Sim self to get a hot Sim boyfriend, Phil. Who do you think I am?” It’s easy to joke. What’s far more difficult is to look back on his life with his current mindset, knowing full well that releasing videos featuring a gay Dil would have been the most terrifying thing ever to his 2014 self. It wasn’t just his audience he was afraid of. It was other YouTubers, strangers on the internet, all the people they worked with at the BBC. And at that point, he was still paranoid that his family was watching their gaming videos, or that it would get back to them somehow. Making Dil gay _never_ would have happened.

Phil smirks. “Well, now our Sim grandchild can be as gay as we want. I think maybe he’s more like us than Dil anyway.”

“You’re saying he’s weird.”

“In the best way possible.”

Dan feels calmer after talking about his fears with Phil, like he always has. Phil’s right. Dab is an artist, he likes dogs, he _is_ sort of weird, and now, he’s going to be in love with Evan Pancakes. “Okay. We’re going to do this.”

\----

So Dab gets aged up, and Evan along with him. They make Dab kiss Evan’s hands, hug him, cloud-gaze with him.

“In another universe, this would’ve been us as teens.” Dan sighs wistfully after they do the endscreen.

Phil looks over at him from where he’s fiddling with the camera, an eyebrow raised. “That means in another universe, your mum would be Eliza Pancakes. And my dad would be an evil scientist with a magical ray gun, and would burn down your mum’s house. Is that really what you’d want?”

“Fuck, the implications of this are upsetting. Never mind.”

But when Dan sees the first fanart of teen Dab and Evan, it almost brings tears to his eyes. He shows it to Phil and feels happy in a weird way that he can’t describe. Then he saves it to the secret folder on his desktop where he stores his favourite fanart. It’s probably creepy that he has this on his computer, but it makes him feel seen. And even though Dab and Evan aren’t him and Phil, this little drawing makes him feel seen too.

\---

And then it’s time for planning the tour, and to be honest, the two of them are so busy that it’s almost relaxing to sit down in their gaming room and step back into the world of the Sims. Dil’s mad scientist life somehow seems calm compared to how stressful their pre-tour life has been. So Dan’s actually surprised by how not-stressful it is to make and post a video where Dab and Evan kiss.

Maybe that’s because of the fact that he’s been in full-on crisis mode for the past few months. For some reason, on top of the tour stuff, he’s also decided that now is the _absolute perfect_ time to try and come out to his family (and maybe even the whole world). His brain is a dick sometimes, for telling him he has to do it _now_ of all times. His brain is even _more_ of a dick for making him feel bad when he finds it impossible to say the words. He goes to bed tense with stress from it all, and wakes up with a sore back and a stiff neck, feeling too old for this shit.

“Coming out’s a big thing,” Phil says one night after a long day of rehearsals and planning. He’s rubbing Dan’s shoulders with soothing fingers. Dan’s head also aches. He’s just so tired. He’d almost done it today, in a moment of boldness fueled by exhaustion and adrenaline, he’d almost called his mum and just _told_ her, but it once again hadn’t happened.

“I dunno why it’s so hard. It’s just two words I’ve got to say. _I’m gay._ See, I can say ‘em right now.”

Phil’s thumbs work at a tight muscle in his shoulder, and Dan’s eyes close in bliss as he leans into Phil’s touch. “It’s more than that, though. We both know it is.”

It is. It’s years of painful history. And if he can’t even tell his own mother, how the hell is he going to make the video that he’d told himself he’d make by the end of June? Sure, he’s got over two months to do it, but it feels like a Herculean task, and with the tour on top of it?

So two months pass, and his family doesn’t get told, and the video doesn’t get posted, and Dan tries not to be too hard on himself about these facts. But he and Phil do make a video where Dab and Evan “mess around.”

Dan bursts out laughing when the “messing around” finally happens, not because it’s funny really, but because he feels weirdly joyful that he gets to have this cute bit of romance on their channel, and it’s not any different than when Dil and Tabitha do it, and it’s not wrong. It’s a happy moment.

It may not be a personal coming out video, but it’s still posted on the last day of Pride Month. It still somehow feels like a nice message of _‘fuck you, I’m gay’_ to the universe and all of his bullies, to make a video where two boys express their love to each other.

\---

And then, after that, and after having so many of their fans give them pride flags to sign during their tour, it’s like a dam has broken. Maybe he’s just deliriously tired from this whole year, but Dan finds himself barely even blinking when Phil makes more cheeky innuendos in other videos about hypothetical husbands and shirtless guys. He agrees to play that horrible mounting men game that Phil keeps cackling over. He suggests that they play Heartthrob, because he’s excited to share with their audience how cheesy and fun it is.

He can’t put it into exact words why everything’s not as scary as it was a year ago, or even a few months ago.

He doesn’t know why it’s not scary to draw parallels to their own past when they’re moving Dab and Evan into the city together, why he finds himself commenting, “You didn’t have a bedside table at your first apartment,” and, “That is literally the table we had in Manchester.” It’s bordering on Too Much, making references to their real life like this, but it feels right somehow. He thinks that maybe the fact that they’re going on hiatus soon is making him feel more nostalgic towards everything right now.

“I liked that flat,” Phil says. Dan smiles.

“It was so small though.”

“It was cozy!” Phil had always called it ‘cozy’ from the time he first moved in, as if that made it better.

“I miss it. Sometimes.” The game is paused, and Dan knows that this is turning into an introspective moment that they’ll have to edit out later. That’s okay.

“Yeah?” Phil’s gaze is so steady and warm.

“It felt like home. Like a safe haven where we were the only two people in the world, and that it was okay. That I didn’t have to be scared about the future anymore, or family shit, or university when I was there.”

Which was true in some ways. Being able to put some distance between himself and his family made life a lot easier. It didn’t feel like he was living a double life so much once he moved out. And Phil having his own place, with no roommates or parents around, meant that they could finally be as physically affectionate as they wanted without worrying about others walking in. That was pretty damn great.

But having a safe haven didn’t take away his problems. He still was going to a university program he wasn’t interested in, taking classes that made his life miserable for too long. He still had to pretend to his family and to the internet that Phil wasn’t his boyfriend. He was still trying to fight with his stupid brain all on his own.

Still, Dan wouldn’t have traded those months of his life for the world.

“Do you miss it? The flat?”

“Of course I do,” Phil says. Dan’s not surprised. Phil has always been the sentimental one between the two of them. “We made lots of happy memories there.”

Dan turns back to the screen, where their Sims are frozen in time, Dab eating a microwaved pudding as Evan watches him from across the tiny table. “I think Dab and Evan will have lots of happy memories in their flat too,” he says. It’s just like how he and Phil used to be. It’s who they still are, deep down, two boys excited to live in a big city, in love and excited for what life has to bring next.

It suddenly hits him that he’s going to miss these Sims when the gaming channel goes on hiatus. The break is going to be a good thing, he knows that. He and Phil are _tired._ It’s been a long, crazy, wonderful decade of work. But Phil’s been wanting to start some new hobbies, and Dan wants to put his energy into coming out to his family and to the internet. They’re both the sort who will just work and ignore all their real life problems, to their own detriment. This hiatus will give them some much-needed extra time for self-improvement.

Still, it feels sad to know that they might not be seeing their Sims for a while. He’ll always be fond of Dil, but there’s just something about Dab and Evan that he’s especially going to miss. They’re just getting started on their own crazy life journey together. Maybe it’s silly to get so emotionally attached to characters that they had a hand in creating. But in their own little way, with each positive comment they inspired from subscribers, these two guys have helped Dan feel just a little more confident existing in this confusing world.

**Author's Note:**

> Something I was debating about writing for the “hits different” fic fest, but I didn’t get around to signing up for it. This is my sort of love letter to the Sims series/dapg- thanks for keeping me entertained since 2014! (I can still hope of getting the Devan wedding one day, can’t I?) 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this fic! Reblog on tumblr [here!](https://possumdnp.tumblr.com/post/187493458945/in-a-simpler-world)


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